Are Devices and Social Media Redefining Human Connection?
As social media reshapes how we connect, we have to rethink what we need to feel fulfilled in our relationships, and realize that no amount of tweets, texts, or Facebook status updates can provide it. Digital connections may give the effect of companionship without the demands of friendship, which becomes irresistible when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. Like all tools, we have to learn how to use it well, and not let it use us. We cannot become dependent on it to do things it simply cannot do like fulfill our deep need for intimacy, genuine connection and real friendship. How is technology shaping our modern relationships with ourselves, others, and how it proposes itself as the designer of our affections?
The more we overuse technology, the less time we have to nurture our primary relationships that will endanger the development of future generation’s mental focus and vital interpersonal skills. The problem at hand is that we look to social media and devices to protect us against loneliness even as we use it to control the strength of our connections.
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Works Cited and Annotated Bibliography
Grieve, R., Indian, M., Witteveen, K., Anne Tolan, G., & Marrington, J. (2013).Face-to-
face or facebook: Can social connectedness be derived online?.Computers in
human behavior, 29(3), 604-609.
This article provides information that investigates by limiting Facebook use may offer the opportunity to develop and maintain social connectedness in the online environment. In addition, limited Facebook connectedness relates to lower depression and anxiety and greater satisfaction with life. Overall, Facebook may act as a separate social medium in which to develop and maintain relationships, providing a temporary social outlet associated with a range of positive psychological outcomes.
Hampton, K.N., Sessions, L.F., Her, E.J.,& Rainie, L.(2009). Social isolation and new technology.Pew Internet & American Life Project: Washington.
Sociologists Miller Mcpherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and Matthew Brashears add new bits of knowledge to conversations about the degree of social seclusion in America. They observe the role of the internet and cell phones in the way that people interact with those in their core social network. They showed the rise of web and cellular phones as one of the motives that pulls individuals away from face-to-face social settings.
Pea, R., Nass, C., Meheula, L., Rance, M., Kumar, A., Bamford, H., & Zhou, M. (2012). Media use, Face-to-Face Communication, Media Multitasking, and Social Well- Being Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Girls.Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 327-336.
Roy Pea of the School of Education at Stanford University wanted to find out exactly how use of media outlets in general, and multitasking between such channels in particular, affected the social well-being of young girls. He was specifically interested in determining if false relationships online or over texting and video chatting were stronger and more intimate than those developed through face-to-face communication. Pea also looked at rejection coping, positive and negative affect and hours spent using media in relation to total sleeping hours per day, this study examined those oversights in a large-scale survey using data collected from over 3,400 girls. Pea also noticed that nearly all of the in-person encounters resulted in an increase in positive emotional well-being and social functioning.
Tucker, P. (2007).The Over-Mediated World.Futurist, 41(1), 12-13.
Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, wrote a book in 2005 called, Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in the Technological Age. Bugeja, describes what happens when the stresses of the real-world conflict with the virtual world, leading to too many people giving too much attention to devices and ignoring reality.
In this article, Patrick Tucker, Director of Communications and editor for The Futurist magazine observes Michael Bugeja’s book. He attempts to answer the question of whether or not our constant connectedness is making society more or less knowledgeable. He focuses on the media, the problems and abuses of inter-connectedness and what this means for higher education.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other.New York: Basic Books.
Sherry Turtle is a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has 15 years of research and hundreds of interviews with children and adults. Her book, Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other examines how devices are changing the way parents relate to their children, how friends act together, and why both young and old keep their devices in-hand all the time, even when they go to sleep. Under all this communication lies a deep human need for quietness, seclusion, and affection. She explains how texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. Turkle believes it is possible to be in constant digital communication and yet still feel alone.